Online or in person, there is much to for an editor to keep on top of in the world of Classics teaching. It can be all-engrossing. A ready supply of articles which explore the abundant and widespread interests of the discipline and which authors want to share with other teachers continues to flow in. Submissions keep coming in, increasingly from other countries. The editor and the Classical Association Teaching Board are also keen to commission articles from teachers and others which reflect the passion, interest and dynamism of the teaching community.
Teachers and students are having a difficult time: at the time of writing, it is still not 100% sure that schools will open in England on March 8. A huge amount of energy has been spent on learning new digital skills: the standard lesson has been turned on its head. Some schools are asking teachers to teach face to face all day, according to a lightly-adapted timetable; others have adopted different approaches, with asynchronous teaching and drop-by sessions being commonplace. Resources are being rethought; old paper-based activities updated or binned; the potential of digital learning and assessment being considered.
Surely it won't all be set aside and teachers revert to the text book, the dictionary and worksheets? What will last through from the experiences of lockdown teaching and learning? Teaching will never be the same again – will it? What will the future of Classics teaching (let's be specific) be like? Some observations. Teachers have had to learn new techniques for teaching via video, like Zoom or Teams. Has that led to greater precision in the choice and sequencing of activities? How do teachers utilise the functionality of the meeting / breakout rooms, chat functions, responses? What do teachers make of the apps that are in common use? The size of the screen matters. Does the physical size of the screen and the layout of widely-used apps like PowerPoint provide the same sort of presentational activities as are common in the classroom, or do they expand or curtail them? How does one maintain the integrity of a whole Latin text or even an English one, when one can only fit a few lines on the screen? Has the technology pushed teachers towards the atomisation of stories into their individual components of sentence, phrase and word? PowerPoint is often condemned for the way it can oversimplify complex ideas: how have teachers exploited its various functionalities to maintain intellectual rigour? Increasingly, I see teachers using recordings of themselves reading, explaining, presenting. Students can play them again and again, for consolidation and revision. Is this the moment for yet another reconsideration of the flipped classroom? Traditional approaches which fitted pencil and paper tests and modelling answers via the whiteboard are an uneasy match for the screen and serried ranks of students’ faces or, worse, blank screens. The interaction has had to change. A big worry seems to be that students, when asked to ‘do a translation’ from the more popular course books, simply find one on the internet and submit that. Will this change teachers’ approach to the idea of the translation as a way of testing students? We hope that future editions of the Journal of Classics Teaching can capture these experiences and turn them to advantage in the classroom when normality returns. Readers should feel encouraged to contribute for the next issue of the Journal.
Meantime, this edition of the Journal of Classics Teaching is again packed with articles which we hope you will enjoy and find useful and informative. First come the three Roman Society PGCE prize-winners for 2019–20. Rosie Sykes, in Can studying a topic through a reception studies approach improve the quality of Year 7 students’ creative responses to the ancient world? explores the use of multiple post-classical interpretations of the Underworld to develop students’ understanding of and responses to Virgil's Aeneid 6. Emanuela Venditti's Using Comprehensible Input in the Latin Classroom to Enhance Language Proficiency investigates how Krashen's theories of language acquisition can benefit early learners, and utilises resources based around Legonium. Eleanor Lucas’ essay Gaining understanding of different perspectives in Virgil's Aeneid through creative writing investigates ways to engage students with a deeper understanding of the work through varied writing activities. David Bennett's A case study into pupil perceptions of Latin will no doubt resonate with us all as we try to encourage, cajole and entrance students into choosing Latin as a GCSE option against much competition. Covid and plague, by Jilene Malbeuf et al. compares the greatest emergency of our time with the Great Plague in 5th century Athens. Jerome Moran explores The Strasbourg Speeches to shine light on the history of the use of the Latin language. Elena Miramontes gives some useful information for teachers who might be interested in organising a Textile Workshop to Approach Classical Civilisation. Caroline Bristow, in a piece commissioned by the Classical Association Teaching Board, opens what is intended to promote a proper debate about the future of national qualifications in classical subjects with an introductory essay Reforming Qualifications: the how, the why and the who. It is hoped that further contributions from interested parties might help teachers rather than government ministers shape the discussion. Finally, we include three in the occasional series of ‘authors in their own words’ articles. The Hands-Up CIC group get a chance to explain the choice of characters which populate the new Suburani Latin course book, with Keeping the ancient world relevant for modern students with Suburani; Lynn LiCalsi describes how her new Latin novella Provincia Iudaea is designed to appeal to students from a variety of backgrounds and interests; and Ed Clarke showcases his Clarke's Latin Course, complete with glimpses inside the covers.
Articles
Sykes, R. Can studying a topic through a reception studies approach improve the quality of Year 7 students’ creative responses to the ancient world?
Venditti, E. Using Comprehensible Input in the Latin Classroom to Enhance Language Proficiency.
Lucas, E. Gaining understanding of different perspectives in Virgil's Aeneid through creative writing: an action research project with a sixth form Classical Civilisation class in a mixed comprehensive.
Bennet, D. A case study into pupil perceptions of Latin, conducted with a mixed-ability, Year 9 Latin class at a comprehensive faith school.
Malbeuf, J., Johnson, P., Johnson, J. and Mardon, A. Covid and plague.
Moran, J. The Strasbourg Speeches.
Miramontes, E. Ancient textile workshop.
Bristow, C. Reforming Qualifications: the how, the why and the who.
Delaney, C., Smith, H., Tims, L., Smith, T. and Griffiths, W. Keeping the ancient world relevant for modern students with Suburani.
LiCalsi, L. Provincia Iudaea.
Clarke, E. Clarke's Latin Course.
Book Reviews
Gardini (N.) Long Live Latin. The Pleasures of a Useless Language. James Watson.
Hall, (E.) and Stead, (H.) A People's History of Classics. Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1689 to 1939. Barry Knowlton.
de Jouvancy, (J.) The Way to Learn and the Way to Teach. Evan Dutmer.
Matvejević (P.) Our Daily Bread. A Meditation on the Cultural and Symbolic Significance of Bread throughout History. Ana Martin.
Morales (H.) Antigone Rising. The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths. Jo Lashly.
Owen (R.) The Romans: Invasion and Empire. James Watson.
Southon (E.) A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Murder in Ancient Rome. Jo Lashly.
Many articles for the Journal of Classics Teaching start up as conference pieces or teach-meet talks or presentations at staff meetings. The Editor always welcomes interesting or novel pieces, as well as articles which simply describe good teaching practice or events or things of interest to other teachers. Readers should feel confident to submit articles in the usual way to the Classical Association.
Submitting an article to JCT
The Journal of Classics Teaching is the leading journal for teachers of Latin, Ancient Greek, Classical Civilisation and Ancient History in the UK. It originated as the voice of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers in 1963 under the title Didaskalos, being renamed Hesperiam over the years, and finally JCT. It has a broadly-based membership including teachers in the primary, secondary and tertiary education sectors. JCT welcomes articles, news and reports about Classics teaching and items of interest to teachers of Classics both from the UK and abroad. If you wish to submit an article, it should be sent to the JCT Editor, c/o the Classical Association office@classicalasociation.org.
Articles are welcome on classroom teaching practice or on studies about the teaching and learning of Classics in the UK and abroad should be up to 7,000 words. There should be clear pedagogical or academic content. News and reports of events of general interest to teachers of Classics should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words.
All articles should be submitted in Arial 12 point, 1.5 line-spaced and with non-justified margins, and should include the author's name and some biographical details. Images, graphs, diagrams and tables should be submitted separately as jpgs or pdfs as appropriate, with an indication in the text where they should be included. In general, JCT prefers references to conform to the author-date referencing style of the American Psychological Association (APA). The Editor can supply further details of this referencing style if desired. Please ensure that you have permission to reproduce photographs of pupils or the relevant copyright for images, or give details of the origin of the image used. Recent editions of the journal give a guide to the layout of articles.
After submission by the author, the article may be submitted to peer review. The Editor reserves the right to suggest any changes that are felt are needed to be made and makes minor corrections. If major changes are thought to be needed, the author will be asked to rewrite the section which needs changing. Once accepted, the author is assumed to have assigned the right to JCT to distribute the publication electronically. Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors, but if published after electronic appearance, JCT will be acknowledged as the initial place of publication.
For 50 years JCT and its predecessors have been published in hard copy and made available to members of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers. From 2015 JCT has been available freely online, supported by the Classical Association. Back issues of hard copies of JCT are available from the CA Shop and as downloadable pdfs of individual articles freely online via the Association for Latin Teaching website www.arlt.co.uk.
Open access
